Does the age of a domain help in rankings? I've squatted on a dozen or so domains over the last few years but done nothing with them. In fact, they show forbidden when anyone tries to load them.

If I load them with content, will this help increase the rankings quicker because they are aged domains?

Thank you!

-dave

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David Rocci
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In terms of ranks in the search engines... Yes... domain age DOES count. This is part of the reason you see really bad sites rank well.

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Nicholas May | Creative Linking | Real Estate Webmasters

sweet. so now i just need to add some half-decent content and I'm a leg up on a totally beginner? I knew those auto-renewing charges every year would be worth something!

Thanks Nick!

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David Rocci
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Liberty Tax - Shorewood
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Actually Nick, that is not correct. Age of the domain (In terms of when it was registered) has nothing to do with helping you rank quicker. This is a common misconception: What actually matters is "Age of links" because if you were squatting on a domain and it never had any links, than a search engine has never known about the domain, thus it has had no time to earn trust with said search engine. So an old domain is of benefit IF it also has some links and content pointing to it, it has a head start so to speak.

Sqatted domains, are of no more ranking benefit than brand new domains.

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Ah! I stand corrected

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Nicholas May | Creative Linking | Real Estate Webmasters

Webmaster - Purveyor of knowledge, Squasher of dreams

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I'd say it's a combination of all of the above, age of links, length of time in the index, age of domain. Also its been suggested that the length of time in archive.org can also have an effect

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DRang3d
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Thanks Webmaster. That is what I thought but I have heard it the other way a lot of times. It is always nice to get clear direction. Wayne

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Wayne Long
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Domain age makes a big difference. The incoming links are largely irrelevant. As long as you have at least one link and are in the the google index, a well aged domain (4+ years or more) will make a huge difference. Granted, if you have more themed links, more content, etc.. it helps, but as long as it's been in the index for all of those years...and as long as you follow good site ranking processes, the domain will do well.

It doesn't even matter if you buy a domain about clothes with links coming from clothing sites, and then decide to turn around and sell homes with it...it will still work just as well. You might have some branding issues, but that's your call.

You can have a lot of luck with new domains too, but it's generally more work and there are more things to trip you up versus a nice aged domain. If you really want a winner, go for pre-2000 indexed domains.

This is just my experience.

I think there's a misunderstanding here with this last post and if I'm wrong, tell me. If I have a domain parked at GoDaddy for 4 years and haven't done a thing with it, then the age hasn't helped me a bit. Google doesn't know about it, it's not indexed, no links, no content whatsoever. If this is what David is talking about then the fact he's had them for awhile will not help.

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